


We Try To Leave Behind

by Achrya



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Canonical Character Death, F/F, Gun Violence, Homophobic Language, Kidnapping, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-26
Updated: 2015-10-28
Packaged: 2018-04-28 06:36:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5081392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Achrya/pseuds/Achrya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a world where Steve isn’t frozen and goes on to marry Peggy the consequences ripple outward like a stone dropped in a pond. In this world James Rhodes takes in 3 kids from Harlem who’ve lost everything. It’s not Captain America who stands with the Avengers against Loki’s invasion, it’s his granddaughter America. When Fury needs someone he can trust in DC it’s Sam Rhodes’ apartment he breaks into. It’s a picture on a mantle that makes Bucky remember.</p><p>A story in 3 parts: Before, during, and after the events of CA: tWS.</p><p>Note: Updates slowed for NaNoWriMo</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Better Place

**Author's Note:**

> *cracks knuckles* Alrighty. Let’s re-write the entire world, yes? I’ve had to play with ages and timelines to get a reasonable amount of space between Tony/Rhodey and Sam and his siblings. Which. You know. Meh. So Rhodey will be around 50 and Tony will be about 46ish to Sam’s 25 when it’s all said and done. Peggy will be where she is in the movies and Steve will be...well. You'll see. 
> 
> This first 'part' will be stories about Rhodey, Tony, the Carter-Rogers, and the Wilson children. I plan to span all the way to CA:tWS.

 

The first time Sam remembers meeting Tony Stark and James Rhodes is at the wake for his father. He’s 8 and wearing an itchy suit and an ugly tie and his younger sister is stretched out on the pew next to him, her head resting on his lap. The white hair bobbles around her braids are digging into his leg and she’s drooling but he lets her stay there anyway, wishing he could fall asleep too.

They’d been there a while, since sometime after lunch but the line of people is only just now not spilling outside of the church. Later, when he’s older, he’ll realize that it meant something that so many people wanted to pay their respects and that it meant his father had made a difference in more lives than he’d ever thought, but at the time he’s just tired, hungry, and confused.

He’s 8 and death is something he knows happens to people, yes, but when he thinks of it he things of old people, really old people, and some weird place where good people go with clouds and angels. It isn’t something he can quite make fit the picture of his father, a man who laughed and played and was strong and helped people. He doesn’t understand how if good people go to heaven to be with God his father is just lying in some box in the church. Was he not really a good person? Had he done something bad?

He doesn’t dare ask his mother because questions just make her look sad and hurt and then she walks away and he can hear her crying. He can’t ask Gideon because Gideon is a jerk (Sam can remember his dad smiling at him and explaining that Gideon is a ‘preteen’ and that ‘preteens are jerks’ not too long ago.) and has done nothing but argue with their mother and slam doors since the cops came to tell them the news.

So he’s just confused.

People keep coming by and hugging him or shaking his hand even though he doesn’t know them and they keep telling him what a good man his father was and that he’s in a better place (which he isn’t. He doesn’t know how they can say that when his father is right there, at the front of the church in his Sunday best for everyone to see. Church is nice but Sam isn’t sure he’d call it ‘a better place’.) and that sometimes things happen for a reason.

That part he really just doesn’t get.

He knows death means forever. When someone dies they’re gone and they don’t get to come back which means his dad isn’t ever coming home. How can that be ‘for a reason’? It just seems terrible to him. His chest hurts and his eyes burn when he thinks about it but he doesn’t want to cry because someone has to look after Sarah and his mom is busy and Gideon is a jerk so it has to be him.

He can’t cry because she doesn’t understand because she’s a baby, only 3, and if he cries she’ll cry too so he doesn’t, and won’t.

So he keeps Sarah occupied, playing with her and taking her outside to play in the snow in the yard behind the church (but making sure her new dress doesn’t get wet) and feeding her crackers and cookies that people keep bringing by to them.

Gideon stays at the front of the church with their mother and he looks angry, face all twisted up and eyes dark. He never cries either, just nods and accepts the hugs and handshakes while glaring out at the world.

“Hey Sam.”

He looks up to find more people he doesn’t know standing at the end of the pew. The man who knows his name has dark skin and eyes and is in a uniform and holding a hat in his hands. The other doesn’t look like he’s from their neighborhood at all; he’s got sunglasses on even though they’re inside, dark hair, light skin, and weird facial hair.

The second man is making a face but when he notices Sam’s attention he stops and reaches up to take off his glasses then tucks them away into the pocket of his suit jacket.  

“You know my dad?”

Since Sarah had fallen asleep people had started coming by less and no one was trying to hug him anymore. He liked it better that way but he was going to be polite even though he wanted to be left alone. His dad wants them to always be nice and respectful of adults.

The man in the uniform nods then bends down so he’s eye level with Sam. He pitches his voice to be quiet so as not to wake up Sarah. “Your dad helped me with something a few years ago. My sister was lost here, in the city, and your dad tried to find her.”

Sam blinks. So far no one had actually talked to him about how they knew his dad. They all just said the same things and then moved along. No one seemed interested in actually talking to them.

“I lost Sarah once but she ended up being under a bush in the garden.” Sam says and the man smiles at him. “Did you find your sister?”

The man’s smile changes, becomes smaller. “Not really, no, but sometimes people don’t want to be found.”

Sam nods slowly; he doesn’t understand why someone wouldn’t want to be found and be with their family and thinks that if his father could be with them he’d do it so being able to and not wanting to is just strange. But he doesn’t think he should ask why so he looks over at the other man. He’s hoping he’ll have something else to say about his dad, something more than what everyone else is saying.

Something really about his dad.

“Did you know my dad?”

He blinks, looking surprised then looks down at the man in the uniform who’s smiling again but this time there are teeth and he looks like he might laugh.

“No no, I didn’t. I’m just...Rhodey- James? Mr. Rhodes? How does that work?” The man stops, takes his glasses back out his pocket and turns them around in his hands before shrugging. “No but I hear he was-”

“A great man?” Sam sits back, something cold settling into his stomach. The man makes a noise and flaps his hand then looks back at the uniformed man again. “That’s what everyone says. He was a great man and things happen for a reason.”

“Well that’s fucking dumb.”

Sam’s mouth drops open. He’s heard words like that; sometimes adults use them when they don’t know he’s around and Gideon likes to say them when their parents aren’t there, and he knows they’re bad words.

“Tony!”

“What? It is. Who says that to a kid?” The man in the suit looks angry as he shakes his head. “How is that not terrifying to-”

“When you have your own kids you can tell them whatever you want.” The man in the uniform stands up and reaches for his friend, wrapping a hand around his arm. They exchange looks then the man in the suit rolls his eyes.

“Fine, Sour Puss.” He looks back at Sam. “It’s not dumb and I shouldn’t have said that.”

Sam bites his lower lip then, very quietly, says. “It’s pretty dumb.”

There are other people coming towards them, lead by his mother, so they don’t say anything else to him, though the man in the suit looks like he likes what Sam had to say. The man in the uniform speaks to his mother who smiles even though her eyes are red and she looks like she might fall asleep at any moment, and then they leave.

Mrs. Prescott, the gray haired lady who plays the organ and lives in the house next to them, whispers to his mother.

“I didn’t know Paul knew Tony Stark.”

His mother doesn’t say anything to that. She just bends down and scoops Sarah up, rubbing a hand over her back when she stretches and whines, then nods at Sam.

“Let’s go Sammy.” He gets up and she puts a hand on his shoulder. “You did good today. Your father would be proud.”

Gideon, standing at Mrs. Prescott’s side, makes a face. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Depressing. So depressing. Sam has a pretty sad backstory. (Not my fault. Marvel did it.)

2.

 

The next time he meets James Rhodes it’s a year and three months later; he’s nine years old but when he thinks back on it he realizes he feels much older. He’s worn out before he’s even ten and it’s a feeling that will follow him for the rest of his life.

It’s about three months after their mother dies and he can still see the blood and the way she just fell to the ground like a doll that someone had dropped every time he closes his eyes, hear her begging and crying and the ear shattering pop.

He doesn’t remember much else. There were cops and an ambulance and people from the neighborhood and screaming and crying but it all blurs together into a bunch of color and ear splitting sound.  

Sometimes he thinks he remembers the man’s face, sees him in crowds or lurking outside of the home they’d put him and Gideon in, can hear in voice in the hallways at school. Sometimes he thinks he’s everywhere, just waiting.

Other times the face is just a blur, a faceless shadow that takes away his mother and sometimes that’s worse.

They put them in a house with a family in Harlem, and it’s nothing like the small apartment they’d moved into after their father died, so they’ll be able to go to the same schools. The social worker, Ms. Juarez, says it like it’s an important that that they should be grateful for but Sam isn’t sure that’s true.

It’s hard to concentrate in school and all of his friends ask about his mom and the house they’re staying in so Sam stops talking to them, only then the only person he has to talk to is Gideon and his brother doesn’t want to talk.

Gideon is 12 and angry and sometimes he yells at Sam and tells him he should have done more to protect their mom. Gideon wasn’t there that day, it was just him and Sarah, and Sam thinks that his brother, who is bigger and stronger, would have done something.

Gideon would have stopped it.

Gideon would have saved her.

Sam lets his brother yell. It’s the only time Gideon talks to him at all.

Sarah is somewhere else. The house they’re in is full of boys so they put her in a place where there are other little girls and they tell Sam it’s very nice and that she’s happy there but he asks about her most days. He knows it annoys the people taking care of him and they both repeat the same thing over and over and he’s annoyed too because he wants to see or talk to his sister but no one will let him.

He overhears Gideon asking sometimes but when his brother asks he gets loud and shouts. One time he even breaks a lamp.

On the days Gideon asks about Sarah Sam doesn’t.

His grades aren’t good. He can’t make himself do his homework and he falls asleep in class sometimes and other times he just isn’t listening. It’s not on purpose but it’s hard to follow along a lot of the time. His teacher sends notes back to the home with him and telling him that she is very disappointed because she knows what a bright boy he is and that this isn’t what his mother would want.  

The woman at the home frowns at him and tells him that his mother would be disappointed and that he should do better for her.

Sam wants to tell her his mother is dead so she probably doesn’t care how he’s doing in school but he doesn’t because his parents always told him to respect his elders.

He has a better idea of death than he did when his father died. He closes his eyes and sees his mother falling down and he knows that’s all there is. There is no better place and there are no reasons and it doesn’t matter how good a person she was and he doesn’t think God cares.

Or maybe God isn’t really there.

He doesn’t know and he doesn’t really care.

He doesn't really care about anything except Sarah.

One day after school he comes back to cars sitting outside of the house. One belongs to Ms. Juarez, she comes by once a month to check on them, but there’s a black one he doesn’t know in front of it. There’s a prickle of fear; part of him hates new people because maybe it’s that man finally come back to get them too.

He doesn’t know if that is something that will ever happen but the man hasn’t been caught so he’s afraid anyway. It was something that was always there, a thought he couldn’t make go away that caused a heavy feeling in his stomach and made it hard to breathe.

He goes inside, throat tight and mind buzzing, and the first thing he sees is Gideon sitting on the stairs, arms cross over his chest.

“Sam!”

He jerks at the sound of his voice being shouted, stiffenes up when he’s tackled and puts his hands up, grips her shoulders and for a second he’s back on the sidewalk and Sarah is screaming but it’s muffled and his ears are ringing and his face is wet and

A hand touches his shoulder and he wants to shrink back but instead he looks up into concerned brown eyes. “Sam, breathe. Breathe.”

He does and slowly he lets go of Sarah. She sniffles at him, eyes wet, and he feels like he’s being punched to the chest. He touches the top of her head and feels her flinch under his hand before she shuffles away from him to where Gideon is.

“I’m sorry.” He doesn’t know how to tell her how he feels, that everything scares him and that he doesn’t know where he is sometimes because he doesn’t say any of those things to anyone, so he tries to smile at her instead.

She sniffles again.

Sam’s heart hurts.

“Hi Sam.” Ms. Juarez says and her voice is soft and somehow grating all at once. She bends down slightly so they're eye level and puts her other hand on his other shoulder. He wants to shake her loose but he doesn’t. “Do you think you’re up for a talk?”

He catches movement out of the corner of his eye and looks past her to the entrance of the living room. There’s a man there, walking out into the entranceway to stand with them. Sam takes in the dark blue uniform, the shiney buttons down the front and colorful blocks on the side, and remembers his father’s funeral.

“I remember you.”

Ms. Juarez looks over her shoulder quickly then straightens up and moves aside to allow the man to come closer.

“I don’t think I introduced myself last time Sam, I’m Major James Rhodes.” He doesn’t bend down and his voice doesn’t take on that stupid sweet pitch everyone uses with Sam now. There’s no big fake smile either, just a serious expression.

Sam nods. “Hi.”

“Major Rhodes has offered to take the three of you in and I want you all to understand that finding a place where you can be together is very important to me.” Ms. Juarez says. “But I know you don’t know Major Rhodes very well even though he was a friend of your father’s, and this must seem very strange or frightening. If you aren’t comfortable or don’t want to go that is completely fine and no one will make you. The Campbells are happy having two stay and Sarah is doing very well with the Browns.

“Major Rhodes lives further away so you won’t be as close to your friends and you’ll need to attend a new school. It will be a very big adjustment.”

She keeps talking but Sam stops listening. He looks at his brother and sister; Gideon is wearing the same blank look he always does and Sarah’s turned away, face buried in their brother’s shirt. Then he looks at Major Rhodes and the man stares back and Sam thinks he looks tired.  

Years later Sam will understand that it wasn’t as easy as showing up and just taking them and that this man, who didn’t know them but wanted to keep them together anyway, had jumped through hoops, filed paperwork, rearranged his job and his home, and hired lawyers (or borrowed lawyers really) and argued with the person he cared about most in the pursuit of being able to take them in.  

One day he’ll understand it was partially because of their father and a little bit because Rhodes had lost his own sister.

“We’ll be together?” Because all Sam knows in that moment is that his sister is there, with him, and someone was telling him she wouldn’t be taken away and sent somewhere else.

Major Rhodes and Ms. Juarez both nod.

“Okay.”

Gideon says yes too (but only, he insists, so he can make sure Sam and Sarah are safe.) and Sarah just wants to go where they go. They pack quickly, they don’t have as much stuff as they used to, say goodbye to the Campbell’s and the two other boys living there, then put their things in the back of Major Rhodes’ car. They, however, pile into Ms. Juarez’s care for the drive and Sam watches the city flash past. He reaches for Sarah and she lets him hold her hand.

They go over the bridge and through winding streets until they’re turning off the street and coming to a stop in front of a plain looking building. It’s a pale brown on the outside, with darker brown around the windows and coloring the door.

Major Rhodes leads them down a hallway, pointing out a living room and dining room, a closed door that he says is his bedroom and office, and ends in kitchen. It’s all white and gleaming; Sam feels out of place when they crowd around the table with apples and juice.  

They don’t speak to each other and Sam mostly ignores the food in front of him, opting instead to watch Ms. Juarez speak to Major Rhodes in the hallway just outside the kitchen. He can’t hear them but she looks serious and Major Rhodes is nodding often but honestly looks bored. When she’s done she comes back into the kitchen to give Gideon a card with her number on it and tells them she’ll be back soon to check on them but to call if they need anything.

She leaves and Sam doesn’t feel anything watching her go.

It’s strange being at the table together and even stranger when Major Rhodes comes back from seeing Ms. Juarez out. It reminds him of when the police had dropped them at the Campbell’s house after finally realizing they had noone to come and get them and nowhere to go, but not as bad.

That day they’d separated them from Sarah and there had been screaming and crying and by the time Sam had gotten to the house he’d felt like he just wanted to go to somewhere dark and quiet and never come back out.  

This time it’s just...different.

\---

That night Sam leaves the room he’d been given and creeps across the hallway to where Sarah is. His room is fine, though there isn’t much to it; just the bed, a desk and chair, and a half full book shelf, but it’s strange and he can’t sleep. He and Gideon have been sharing a room as far back as he can remember, even at the Campbell’s, and he doesn’t know how to sleep all alone.

He pushes open the door then stops, peering through the darkness. There’s a nightlight plugged into the wall by the bed, which has light purple sheets and had been topped with a stuffed bear earlier. Sarah is a tiny little lump, huddled under the blankets with her head resting on Gideon’s lap and a thumb in her mouth.

“Sarah was scared.” Gideon is awake, sitting so his back is against the headboard, and looking at him. “You scared?”

Sam feels, suddenly, very small.

Then Gideon reaches over Sarah and picks up the edge of the comforter. Sam pads over, climbs onto the bed and under the blanket. Gideon pulls the blanket up a little further until it's cover Sam's shoulders then settles back. 

Sarah smells like coconut, like the stuff their mom used to do her hair. 

Sam falls asleep and doesn't dream. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’ve got a whole timeline for this story. It took actual counting.
> 
> Re: Rhodey’s rank. I was in the Navy once upon a time but I wasn’t an officer (Just a lowly grunt.) so I had to research Air Force Officer ranks and apparently one can be promoted to Colonel around the 20-22 year mark. If Rhodey is promoted to Colonel sometime between Ironman 2 and 3 (2010-2013) we can assume he’s been in the military since 1988 or thereabouts and at the point where he takes in the Wilson kids (1999) he’d reasonably been in long enough to be a Major.

**Author's Note:**

> In my head Sarah will be played by Rutina Wesley and Gideon is Arjay Smith (and younger versions of those people as needed). Fill in your own fancasting as needed though, this is just in my head. ...The Wilsons are a fine looking family, okay?


End file.
